


With a Friend in the Dark

by notoneforreality



Series: QB-B3 007 Fest 2020 [8]
Category: James Bond (Craig movies)
Genre: Ameera Hasan, Awesome Eve Moneypenny, Canon Character of Color, Eve Moneypenny is a Good Friend, Eve's POV, Female Character of Color, Female Friendship, Gen, Hijabi Character, Original Character(s), R, Team Q Branch
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-08
Updated: 2020-07-08
Packaged: 2021-03-04 06:01:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,212
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24948871
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notoneforreality/pseuds/notoneforreality
Summary: They'll help fix each other's problems. Then they'll help fix MI6's problems.Two women find each other in the bowels of MI6 and decide that they will be friends.
Relationships: Eve Moneypenny & R
Series: QB-B3 007 Fest 2020 [8]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1795726
Comments: 10
Kudos: 31





	With a Friend in the Dark

**Author's Note:**

> Written for--  
> 8th July: Characters of Colour Day

Eve goes down to Q-Branch to deliver a message, and finds a woman elbow deep in a bin of spare parts, half falling into the container. As she watches, the woman surfaces, triumphant, with something clutched in her hand.

“I knew it,” she hisses, and only then looks up and spots Eve where she’s leaning against the door to the workshop. “Oh. Hello.”

“Hi,” Eve says, grinning. “You alright there?”

“Perfect,” the woman says, her answering grin just as bright. She adjusts her hijab and then steps forward to offer her hand to Eve. “I’m Ameera. Boffin for four years, now.”

Eve clasps her hand and shakes, firm. “Eve Moneypenny. Field agent for two years, secretary for two weeks.”

“Oh, you’re the one who shot Bond,” Ameera says, cheerful about it, and then pauses and winces.

It startles a laugh from Eve, who’s spent the past three weeks as the subject of even more wary looks than usual, as well as a host of whispered rumours. Something about the way Ameera had said it without any blame, simple and good-natured. “That’s me,” she says. “I’ve got a message for Q?”

“Peter’s in Q’s office at the moment, but I can take you up there.” Ameera scoops up an armful of hardware, of which Eve recognises about half, and then fishes a security pass out of her blazer pocket. “Follow me.”

Eve follows Ameera, delivers her message to Q when he’s finished with Peter, and is on her way back up to Mallory’s office when Ameera appears from another door in the warren that is Q-Branch. 

“How do you feel about Subway?” Ameera asks. 

They have lunch. They have lunch the next day, too, and the day after that, and the day after that. Eve learns how to navigate Q-Branch pretty quickly, going down to drag Ameera away from whatever project she’s involved with (usually with Peter, with whom Eve hasn’t exchanged more than two words). The other boffins get used to her presence, and after two weeks of being friends with Ameera, no one even glaces up when Eve steps out of the lift on the hunt for her lunch companion. 

Today they end up in a little family restaurant not far from Vauxhall, and after they order, Ameera turns a hopeful expression in Eve’s direction.

“So, I was thinking,” she says, “about starting a BAME group in Six.”

Eve turns the idea over in her head, thinks about the argument she’d had with some idiot about diversity quotas the other day, and a smile creeps over her face.

Ameera claps her hands, grinning. “Brill. I’ve spoken to a few people already — Min-ho said he’d be interested in helping to run it, and Olamide and Rachel want to be involved, too — but we haven’t decided any details.” She slants a look at Eve. “You’re good at details.”

Eve is good at details, a skill which she has found just as much use for in her administrative role as in the field, and within two weeks, they have a group set up and meetings organised for every Thursday evening at her house.

They work hard on their group, searching out people who might not have heard about it through the grapevine, who might need the support. They have potluck dinners where everyone can cook recipes from their childhoods, from their cultures. Eve keeps a google spreadsheet of people’s dietary restrictions and everyone uses it, making sure that no one is left out or left hungry.

Eve and Ameera keep having lunch together. They go out drinking for Eve’s birthday, and then spend the next day lazing around Ameera’s flat. Ameera beats Eve at Mario Kart; Eve beats Ameera at Just Dance.

At work, they find an unused room on the first basement floor and call it a break room, fixing it up with cushions and a radio and a sofa that both of them end up sleeping on more than once, sometimes at the same time. They gossip about national security, about The Apprentice, about Adele.

Vauxhall Cross explodes.

Eve is in the building when it rumbles, halfway down to Q-Branch to deliver a message to Q, and she runs, taking flying leaps down stairs and only avoiding snapping her ankles by some miracle of luck. When she reaches Q-Branch, it’s in uproar, but Ameera comes rocketing out of the chaos to clutch at her.

“Where’s Q?” Her face is tight and eyes are wide and frightened. “Did you see Q on the way down? He went to see M.”

“It was from her computer,” a boffin says before immediately plunging back into the fray.

Ameera flinches and Eve sees her own horror reflected in the face in front of her. She swallows, almost choking on the knot in her throat that hasn’t bothered her since Istanbul.

“We’ve got work to do,” she says, and Ameera clutches at her hand before letting her go, off to face whatever’s waiting for her upstairs.

Later, Eve takes Ameera home and holds her as she sobs, mourning the man she’d looked up to. She makes jerk chicken and puts Ameera’s favourite season of Red Dwarf on Netflix and they stay on the couch all night in their most comfy pyjamas, tucked under the blanket Ameera’s Mum gave her as a housewarming gift.

“I’m R, now,” Ameera whispers at five o’clock in the morning, when she’s slipping back under the blankets after prayer, the sun slanting through the venetian blinds. The previous R had gone after Q to try and stop the hack from the source. “Peter’s Q.”

“You can do this,” Eve murmurs into Ameera’s shoulder. “I believe in you.”

They nap for an hour, and then they go back to MI6, retreating into the war tunnels, because there is still work to be done.

Eve meets Peter — Q, now — properly, and then Bond turns up, not dead. It’s Eve’s turn to go to Ameera, half wild and reeling. She’s spent three months as a killer, three months convincing herself that she did what she had to do, and accepting her punishment as a result. She’s made this position hers, but it’s been a fight the whole time, a ghost at her back, ‘take the bloody shot’ echoing through her nightmares.

Being in the bunker means they can’t escape to their usual break room, but they find one of the older tunnels that no one’s been down yet, and take a break in an empty room. Ameera explains everything that happened in last night’s episode of The Great British Bake Off and then helps fix Eve’s outfit. 

“You can do this,” Ameera says. “I believe in you.”

They hold hands and breathe together, and then Ameera, R, goes back to help with the tracking effort, leaving Eve to go and find M.

By the time Bond escapes his evaluations, Eve has recovered enough to joke with him, enough to be indignant about her shooting skills. She can do this. 

She goes to check in with Q and R, to make sure they’re ready for Bond’s mission, and tells Q that he’s wanted in the National Gallery. When he goes, she locks eyes with R and they nod.

They can do this. They believe in each other.

**Author's Note:**

> Keep Notes:  
> \--okay I'm going to be honest here: I don't quite know why I've got so many references to TV shows in all my fics  
> \--“I would rather walk with a friend in the dark, than alone in the light.” (Helen Keller)  
> \--aka: introduction to my R  
> \--I'm actually a little nervous about this fic but I love these ladies  
> \--in which I find it increasingly difficult to come up with titles and summaries  
> \--and my inexplicable need to reference as many random TV shows continues


End file.
